BOOKS PUBLISHED
Caroline has had three books published by Carcanet Press: Watering Can (2009), Trouble Came to the Turnip (2006) and Looking Through Letterboxes (2002).
Carcanet Press is a leading publisher of contemporary poetry based in the United Kingdom and founded in 1969 by Michael Schmidt. Carcanet publishes the work of many leading poets including Chinua Achebe, John Ashbery, Thomas Kinsella and Edwin Morgan.
Caroline’s books can both be purchased directly from Carcanet here.
Reviews of Looking Through Letterboxes:
‘An astonishingly assured piece of work’ - Ruth Padel, Financial Times
‘Her poems burst with linguistic energy’ - Times Literary Supplement
‘Quite magical’ - The Scotsman
Christina Dunhill, Poetry London (2002)
Caroline’s poetic world is one of the paraphernalia of everyday life - telephones, toothpaste, letterboxes etc - gone surreal, gone a bit schizo.
There are shades of Plath’s ‘I do it exceptionally well / I do it so it feels like hell’ and a bit of a feeling of Carol Ann Duffy behind her work. But it’s quite different, and she’s so young! No one has sung the hyperboles of adolescence and its corresponding cynicisms quite like she does - its sick humour and its worldly romance ennui: ‘I like you best when you’re not here, my love.’… over all, what a debut!
Reviews of Trouble Came to the Turnip:
Kathryn Maris, Poetry London (2007)
Bird’s work is winsome, intelligent and startlingly mature. One of the most noticeable things about Bird’s poems is her distinctive voice, inventive modes and modulations of expression. Her poems can be wild and fantastic, suggesting an original mind and a singular vision.
David Mason, “The Poetry Circus”, Hudson Review, Vol. LX, No. 1 (Spring 2007)
One of the more remarkable books to come across my desk is the second collection by a twenty-year-old poet Caroline Bird. At this rate, she is likely to stop writing poetry and disappear on some African gun-running trail before she’s the age Keats was when he died, but I hope she sticks with writing.
Herbert Lomas, Ambit 188 (Spring 2007)
Caroline Bird writes brilliantly, passionately and with humour about everything from money to opera. There’s not a dull poem here. She’s brainy, carries her culture casually, is never at a loss for a phrase or an image and can slip convincingly and revealingly into the surreal. This is a great talent whom I recommend you enjoy straight away at its second pressing.
Matt Simpson, www.Stridemagazine.co.uk (9 October 2006)
Caroline Bird’s Trouble Came to the Turnip is a second collection from someone still only nineteen. It is like nothing I’ve read before. At times surreal, hallucinatory, playful, always vividly imaginative, yet controlled, in a way I can’t quite put my finger on. These are remarkable poems and, if anything (though it would be wrong to claim direct influence), they remind me of the verbal exuberance of the young Dylan Thomas. Caroline Bird has given the language of poetry a real shot in the arm.
Reviews of Watering Can:
Lemn Sissay
“What an original captivating and spellbinding voice. Bird is fearless like ‘the girl who dropped her ice-cream down a volcano and leaped in after it’. She’s dangerous and witty too with a rare quality of imagination. This is a wonder, a beautifully written book of poems.”